Handshields by Anthony Chanut (KS)

[Siegismyname]

Hey guys. Not sure if you've heard about this project. I just pledged for a couple of these.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1246401304/handshields-playing-cards

They are by my good friend Anthony Chanut of France.

They are a rather unique deck of playing cards, utilising a clean and simple back design with the Handshield display as part of the logo. It also uses my favourite simplistic court as well as a very elegant box. Handshields will also be printed in USPCC which I know some of you still prefer to Legends. Best of all, you will get some free cardistry tutorials with your pledge.

Do check them out, leave your comments and hopefully pledge for a couple. For the price listed, it is super worth it as you still get free tutorials.

I have told Anthony about this forum/thread, so we might expect him here in a few days maybe

[Don Boyer]

The design is pretty nice, actually, but it's also very plain.  Minimalist is a popular aesthetic, but it's also been heavily overplayed - you can't swing a dead cat at Kickstarter or most card retailers without hitting a lot of minimalist deck designs.  Compounding the issue is the use of standard courts - granted, he's tweaked them a little, but only by changing a few colors and stripping away a few design elements - no new elements are added, no new artwork to catch the eye.  I wish him luck on this because as I stated, personally, I do like the design, but I can see where it would be difficult raising the funds.  It lacks adequate originality for the present market, I think, almost like trying to sell last year's winter clothes in a springtime sale.

[Shade]

I like the back, especially the burgundy color. The Script style letters then make it interesting enough when contrasted with the plain field of red.  I am with Don on the courts, I have never been a fan of plain block colored courts. Looks like an after thought with little effort. They need some work. If your going with the minimalist look, maybe remove the border and the large suite. Go with something minimalistic but intricate that goes with the H script on the backs.

[Don Boyer]

I like the back, especially the burgundy color. The Script style letters then make it interesting enough when contrasted with the plain field of red.  I am with Don on the courts, I have never been a fan of plain block colored courts. Looks like an after thought with little effort. They need some work. If your going with the minimalist look, maybe remove the border and the large suite. Go with something minimalistic but intricate that goes with the H script on the backs.

"Minimalist but intricate?"  Sounds a bit contradictory...  Give the man something more to go on - what specifically would you suggest?

He wants this to be a cardist's deck - why not REALLY make it a cardist's deck.  Leave in the large suit pip on the courts, remove the borders, blow the courts up to take more room and ELIMINATE the indices but replace them with some kind of corner "flag."  By putting some intricate bit of color in it, something different on each corner (or at least something different on each set of opposing corners) he can make mundane fans look much more visually interesting.  It's not a deck for players, so indices are somewhat unnecessary, but you do want something in that corner that's eye-catching.  Jazzing up the corners on the backs would also help with this.  Think of some of the stuff De'vo has done with his latest decks and you'll get some idea of what I'm leaning towards.

Don't like the idea of eliminating indices?  Fine - put in EXTRA indices.  A smaller set of indices in the normally non-indexed corners would also create something more original and, in the hands of a cardist, more visually interesting.

I would leave the court characters themselves more like the standards.  The colors are more eye-catching than the darker tones chosen here.

[anthonychanut]

Hi everyone,

Thank you Ben for the thread and thank you Don and Shade for giving some useful feedback.

As you have understood from the campaign, this deck is not only for cardists but also for magicians and this is why I didn't go into too much customisation of the court cards. This deck is definitely not for collectors who are looking for a completely redesigned deck but for people like me who want a classic and elegant but still modern deck to perform magic with. I added some cardistry elements inside as this is my thing. Of course, this deck is not for everyone and I understand  that I am aiming at a minority in our community. I wanted to put out a deck that I would love and after a lot of thinking and effort, I came out with exactly what I wanted. Hopefully enough people will enjoy the idea and the cards will be printed in a few weeks. Fingers crossed.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I'll also be glad to read other comments about what you like and don't like about these cards.

I wish you a good holiday season

All the best

Anthony Chanut

[Don Boyer]

Like I stated, the design isn't bad, but it's not terribly unique, either.  It borrows from the designs of many other decks that came before it without bringing something new to the table.  It needs something more to make it distinctive, to really set it apart from the crowd of minimalist decks aimed at magicians and cardists.  The faces as they stand look a lot like other decks, most prominently the Smoke and Mirror series 1 through 6 (the series 7 decks are all 100% standard designs).  The color scheme is like many casino decks and nearly every deck released by Theory11.  The back is a simple, though elegant design - I can't swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen decks with the same type of back design.

I think the deck would really take off if there was just a little something different, something that made it stand out above the crowd.  I've said this countless times on this forum: everyone remembers the first team to reach the peak of Mount Everest, but no one remembers the second, third, fifth, twelfth, etc. and certainly not the 34,288th.  If you aren't the first to do something, you need to add something unique, something that makes you first, if you want people to stand up and pay attention.  You could be on the 34,288th team to the top AND hold the first Burning Man Nepal up there - THEN you'd be remembered, you'd catch people's attention.  This market is practically saturated with new decks.

There was a Chinese family that rented a retail space in my area and was looking to make a restaurant.  There was already more than enough Chinese restaurants and they all seemed pretty interchangeable with each other, they were so close to identical.  So they went a different route - they noticed that both Japanese cuisine and Mexican cuisine were practically non-existent, and not wanting to put all their eggs in one basket, they opened a Japanese-Mexican restaurant.  I live in a region where 50% of all restaurants fail in the first two years - this family's going on nearly a decade now with no end in sight.